Strength of Schedule- Does It Really Matter?

A budding tradition in preseason NFL projections is factoring in which teams have the hardest and weakest schedules. A Lexis search demonstrated that last summer, over 50 articles were published in major newspapers in which prognosticators took made their playoff predictions based at least partly on what the teams' opponents records were the year before. The Seattle Times warned that due to their easy schedule, the 49ers would challenge the Seahawks for the NFC West Crown. Based on the 49ers record, the Kansas City Star also projected a big year for San Francisco. Meanwhile, my beloved Bills were expected to finish the year in the bottom five of the NFL, having drawn the "most difficult" record in the NFL.

Needless to say, the Niners finished a putrid 5-11, never seriously making a run at either the NFC West crown or even the playoffs. The Bills, well, they missed the playoffs. However, they finished 7-9, far from the bottom of the league, and achieving the same exact record as the year before, when their record was said to be easier.

Two examples, I realize, does not prove or disprove an argument. But if one were to examine not just these two teams but the entire league, it will become clear that a team's strength of schedule has virtually nothing to do with its success. From year to year, a team's record change by, on average, 2.5 games. In other words, statistically speaking, a team that finished 8-8 one year should be expected to finish anywhere from 5-11 to 11-5. Year after year, the average correlation that an NFL team's record has to its previous year's record is 0.26, which means that there is a modest relationship between the two records at best. Think about it. Pick your favorite team, and chances are that over the past five years, its record has been on something of a roller coaster ride.

Considering how much records change from year to year in the NFL, why do sportscaster's and columnists continue to emphasize teams' strength of schedule? Before the 2007 season, football analysts and experts were picking apart the Dallas Cowboys' upcoming season game-by-game on ESPN Radio, discussing which ones were winnable and which ones would be tough. Among the NFC out-of-division games, they focused on the Bears, a team that won 13 games the previous year, would probably be the major challenge of the years, whereas the Packers, coming off an 8-8 season with a young team, should be easily winnable. Of course, the Cowboys trounced a Bears team that would only win 7 games all year and fought tooth-and-nail with a Packers team that ended up winning thirteen. Potentially tough games against the Rams and Panthers, 8-8 teams from the year before, turned out to be games against doormats, neither team winning more than 4 games in 2007.

One expert even said that the 'Boys hardest interconference test would be against the upstart Jets, a team full of optimism after a surprising 10-6 year in 2006. Well, the Jets surprised yet again, this time by sliding near the AFC cellar with a 4-12 mark. These examples exist all across the league. Yet still, I guarantee that you will endure more nonsense this year right before the season about how your team's strength-of schedule will affect them.

You wanna get straight to the bottom-line statistic? I decided to analyze the relationship that a team's strength-of-schedule has with the amount of games that it will win that year. The correlation? A ridiculously small 0.018, which means that there is absolutely no relationship whatsoever between a team's strength-of-schedule and its performance.